One of the great might-have-beens of recording history was Sir Georg
Solti’s proposal in the 1990s to record Tristan und Isolde
with a cast headed by Jessye Norman and Plácido Domingo. In the
event Domingo did record the role of Tristan - although he never sang
it on stage - as he did many of the other Wagnerian heroes. Jessye Norman’s
complete commercial Wagner recordings were restricted to Elsa in Lohengrin,
Kundry in Parsifal and Sieglinde in Die Walküre.
This disc therefore gives us a unique opportunity to encounter her in
other Wagnerian roles - Isolde, Elisabeth, Senta and Brünnhilde
- none of which she recorded complete. For many of these her voice would
have seemed to be ideally suited even if she never sang them in the
opera house. At a time when she was recording other operatic heroines
perhaps less fitted to her strengths, such as Salome, Carmen and Leonora
(in Fidelio) this would seem to have been a tragically missed
opportunity.

At any rate let us be grateful for what we have here. Norman’s
voice, straddling with ease the range between soprano and mezzo, had
a richness of tone that is all too rare in heroic sopranos of any generation.
She always sang with warmth and emotion, never made an ugly sound, and
under the right circumstances could convey a sense of strength and dramatic
involvement that could dominate a full symphony orchestra. She may not
always have had the most dynamic of stage presences - although with
the right producer even that disadvantage could be overcome. However
in terms of pure sound she was one of the greatest singers of the Wagnerian
repertory - in the mould of singers such as Kirsten Flagstad rather
than the more steely Birgit Nilsson. Here she directly challenges Flagstad
and Nilsson on their home territory of Isolde and Brünnhilde.

It has to be conceded that her Isolde, at any rate as delivered here,
is very slow indeed. While Klaus Tennstedt in the preceding Prelude
is quite swift, working up a good head of steam, with the entry of the
voice at the start of the Liebestod the brakes are immediately
applied in the manner associated with Bernstein’s complete recording.
Norman has no difficulty with the long-breathed phrases and the result
is highly impressive in terms of sheer sound but the orgasmic climaxes
towards the end do not have the dramatic frisson that would make
this interpretation totally convincing. The “breath of the world”
of which she sings simply does not blow at full strength here. Although
the sense of ecstasy is certainly present, the sense of consummation
is displayed rather than felt inwardly. Bernstein and Goodall, at similarly
slow speeds, managed it. Tennstedt, although he clearly has the right
instincts, just fails to bring it off.

The entry of Elisabeth - which follows with far too short a break after
the conclusion of the Liebestod - brings us suddenly into a completely
different world. Norman has all the sense of rapture and anticipation
that the music demands, although she does not fail to discover the anxiety
that is also present in the music and delivers some exquisitely quietly
shaded singing. She is similarly touching in Elisabeth’s anguished
prayer. After an imperious opening summons to the Virgin, she fines
her voice down to a mere sliver of silvery sound, addressing herself
in an interior monologue which exactly matches Wagner’s delicate
woodwind scoring. Her breath control here is phenomenal.

Senta is a role less well suited to her. She sings the ballad at Wagner’s
revised lower pitch, but the general tone of her voice is rather too
mature and not quite the young virgin of one’s imagination. Nor
does she succeed in differentiating the three verses of the ballad sufficiently:
a line like “Und Satan hört!” goes by without the sense
of satanic presence and possession that one ideally wants. However the
record company are to be congratulated on providing the essential female
chorus to sing during the refrains of the second and third verses, even
if they are rather backwardly placed in the recorded balance. This is
the only item on the disc which has to be provided with a ‘concert
ending’ - and the truncation of the drama is cruel. Even so this
brief excerpt makes one wish we could have heard a complete performance
of what would certainly have been an arresting interpretation of a role
that has not generally been lucky in its interpreters on disc. There
are honourable exceptions.

So to the closing scene of Götterdämmerung. A couple
of months ago I raved about the warm and very feminine Brünnhilde
of Nina Stemme commenting that her interpretation was in the mould of
interpreters of the past. I had in mind Martha Mödl but without
that singer’s very evident failings in matters of steadiness and
pitch. In that same tradition Norman is even better, helped by Tennstedt’s
steadier speeds which allow her to attack high notes without any sense
of snatching at them. In the central section of the Immolation, Norman’s
quiet singing at phrases such as “Ruhe, ruhe, du Gott!”
has a sense of rapt ecstatic contemplation that even a slightly too
prominent and fruity bass trumpet cannot dispel. It is clear that the
heroic high notes afterwards take Norman to the utmost limit of her
abilities. She rides triumphantly over any possible difficulties and
Tennstedt crowns the performance with a superlative and measured account
of the lengthy postlude. He even commendably reduces the unwritten pause
just before the final statement of the ‘redemption’ motif
to a bare minimum. I would hazard a guess that he had been listening
to Goodall’s interpretation of this scene. In places he seems
even to be slower than Goodall on his ENO recording. The orchestra plays
magnificently for him.

The recording, as I have implied, is a little dry and lacks the ideal
sense of resonance especially in the strings. That said, the playing
is precise and often thrilling. The orchestra is well forward in the
mix, giving a realistic sense of the music without any sense that the
already powerful voice of Norman has been artificially boosted. This
gives full justice to Tennstedt’s interpretations. He is only
given his head in the Tristan Prelude and the Götterdämmerung
postlude but this is sufficient to convey the sense that his Wagner
might well have rivalled his Mahler in intensity if he had been given
further opportunities in this field.

I suppose it is futile to continue to rail against the presentation
of this release by Warner. In addition to taking over the EMI catalogue
they have apparently also adopted that company’s reprehensible
policy of providing minimal documentation with their reissues. We are
given here merely a list of tracks, with no biographical details, no
description of the music and worst of all no texts or translations.
It is all very well to argue that these things are all available on
the internet and elsewhere but the art of Jessye Norman, and her insightful
sense of word-painting, are dishonourably devalued here. That should
not however deter Wagnerians from investigating this interesting and
often superlative disc. For some reason it seems to have escaped the
attention of the Penguin Guide, and was not apparently reviewed
at the time of its original release either by Gramophone or Fanfare;
don’t let it slip by again.